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Senate recount looming as parties protest

PETER LLOYD: Now to some more of the fallout from the election and the Electoral Commission is considering whether to take the unusual step of re-counting a Senate vote.

Both the Greens and Sports Party are demanding a vote recount after missing out on a WA Senate seat.

Either way, the Government will still find itself negotiating with the passage of bills with a mixed group of eight cross-benchers.

Lexi Metherell reports.

LEXI METHERELL: On the first count of the West Australian Senate vote, the last two spots have gone to the Palmer United Party candidate Zhenya Wang and Labor's Louise Pratt - but only just says Greens leader, Christine Milne.

CHRISTINE MILNE: In Western Australia there were more than one and a quarter million votes cast and at a critical choke point in the preference count, that is where one set of preferences would cascade one way and elect two candidates or the other way and elect an alternative two, the only difference was 14 votes.

LEXI METHERELL: Green's senator Scott Ludlum has lost his seat and the Australian Sports Party's Wayne Dropulich has also missed out. Both parties are now calling for a recount.

The Greens just want part of the vote recounted, but the Sports Party wants the Electoral Commission to go through the entire 1.3 million Senate ballot papers cast in WA again. That would be quite the undertaking says the commission's Brendan Barlow.

BRENDAN BARLOW: It would be approximately two to three weeks, more likely towards three weeks. It's taken about three weeks to get to this point so it certainly wouldn't be done any quicker.

LEXI METHERELL: The commission will announce later today whether it will do a recount. It's very rare, unlike in the House of Representatives, in the Senate there's no automatic trigger for the recount if the vote yields a margin of less than 100.

The ABC's election analyst Antony Green.

ANTONY GREEN: The commission may choose to recount certain votes or certain types of votes or certain polling places, but to go back and recount 1.4 million ballot papers, to free data entry all the below the line ballot papers is an enormous task. And unless there was something wrong with the procedures followed by the Electoral Commission, that's a substantial ask them to do so and you need better grounds than just saying it's close.

LEXI METHERELL: There'll be 33 Coalition Senators in the new Senate. That means the Government will need another six votes in the Upper House to get legislation through.

Antony Green says if there's a recount and if it changes anything or if nothing changes, either way the Coalition will still be negotiating with a grab bag of cross benchers.

ANTONY GREEN: A recount which change the result would give another single member party in the Australian Sports Party and reduce the Palmer United Party to two, which decreases the influence of the Palmer United Party, assuming that they would vote as a block anyway.

LEXI METHERELL: And as it stands, do you think that the Senate is in the, fully in the favour generally of the Coalition?

ANTONY GREEN: Well, the Coalition could work with that new Senate. They couldn't work with the current Senate. If Labor and the Greens controlled the Senate, the Coalition would find it very difficult to govern. With Labor and the Greens removed from control of the Senate, the Coalition will find this, the new Senate, easier to deal with, even though the balance of power on the crossbenches is heavily fractured.

LEXI METHERELL: The Coalition has declared that abolishing the carbon tax will be its first order of business, but with the Greens and Labor controlling the Senate for now, it won't be able to do that until the new Senate comes in, in July next year.

If the new Senate remains as it looks on preliminary polling, there'll be three Palmer United Party Senators who support scrapping the tax.

The Liberal Democrat Senator, David Leyonhjelm will also help abolish the tax, as will the DLP Senator John Madigan and Family First's Bob Day.

But the Coalition's likely to run into trouble introducing its direct action measures to reduce emissions. The Senator-elect Bob Day says he opposes such a plan.

BOB DAY: There's a lot more to climate than CO2. We think it is an absolute total waste of money, this direct action, for any kind of action for Australia to try to effect or take action on the world's climate is just ludicrous.

LEXI METHERELL: The rest of the grab bag Senate will include the Motoring Enthusiasts Ricky Muir and the South Australian independent Nick Xenophon.

Senator Xenophon is betting that the Coalition will hold off on scrapping the carbon tax until the new Senate comes in and he's renewed his call for mandatory preferential voting to be scrapped.

NICK XENOPHON: I don't think the Government is looking at rushing off to a double dissolution election, certainly not with the current voting system for the Senate.

I think it needs reform. I think we ought to go to the New South Wales type system for the legislative council there, where you have optional preferential below the line, so you only have to number for instance, one to six below the line on the Senate ballot paper for it to be valid or simply number at least one above the line, but you get rid of these murky, dirty preference deals that you've seen around the country.